Props to VelvetGlove [link disabled], another Xanga member, who posted some great pictures and facts about my favorite St. Louis Cardinal of all time, Ozzie Smith. I thought I knew everything about the Wizard of Oz, but I did not know that he is only the third Hall of Famer to have a college degree. That is really mind-boggling. Anyway, check it out by clicking her name.

This is going to be a Cards heavy post because last Sunday (miraculously the only weekend day in the last month that it has not rained) I went to Yankee Stadium for the first time to watch my beloved Redbirds .... tank and get swept by the Yankees. (sigh) Oh well. Yankee stadium is so amazing, even from the bleachers, the weather was beautiful, Pujols hit a home run, and Judson took some good pictures for me of Woody Williams warming up in the bullpen. There were a LOT of Cardinals fans there; proof once again that Cardinals fans are the greatest in the world. (No, Cubs fans, just because you suffer more does not automatically make you the best.) Oh, and since I haven't given a grade this week: B-. We did take two of three in Fenway, after all, and I'm excepting Clemens's 300th win for historical reasons.

OK, so here's the cool thing I did today. My boss, Doug, and I drove into the city to what is known as the Morningside campus of Columbia (basically the main campus) and visited the archivist for some much-needed advice. Columbia is the coolest campus in the world; it is everything you would ever want a college camus to look like. Oddly, something about the style of the architecture kind of reminded me of OSU, or at least that part in front of the library that doesn't look like a giant parking lot with buildings in the middle (sorry, Mich & Dylan). And Low Library (which is not a real library anymore but the main administration building) is so amazing. Then Doug and I checked out the art curator's file on this sort of ugly statue of Lincoln reading a book on horseback that was put up at Lamont in the 1960s. It was really amusing, because some of the letters actually said things like "this piece is not very good, can we stick it somewhere where it doesn't imply Columbia actually likes it?" We even found a note that admitted that the only reason Columbia even accepted the statue in the first place (it was a gift from the artist) was that an intermediary who arranged the gift hinted that should Columbia take it, the sculptor might be willing to donate actual money to the school (she was apparently pretty wealthy).

Of course, my writer's brain was going a mile a minute, especially as the mysterious intermediary kept turning up. This woman, who seemed to be a rich society friend of the elderly, ailing sculptor, apparently was going around to schools and other places and offering them statues. But one of the notes in the file suggested that the intermediary was not actually informing the sculptor that the donation was being made until after the school or whatever said they'd take it. And like I already said, she was obviously coercing the schools into taking the ugly things by hinting at the prospect of a monetary donation. So what, I wonder, was this woman actually doing? Had she been charged by the sculptor, who was quite close to the end of her life, to try and send off her remaining works before she died? Did she see herself as a patron, promoting the artist by getting her works displayed at prominent public institutions? Or was she playing some weird game with both the schools and the sculptor? The story wheels are turning furiously ....